Understanding How to Use Mobile Marketing in Small Businesses

Mobile marketing is a marketing technique which uses established systems that give businesses the ability to communicate directly with customers through smartphones or other mobile devices. Small businesses lack experience in developing and using mobile marketing strategies to increase sales. The fundamental idea of mobile marketing is to improve the business marketing performance to maximize profits. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how five small business marketers successfully created and implemented mobile marketing strategies to increase brand awareness and sales. The research focused on successful, small, independent businesses that have successfully used mobile marketing. This study is motivated by two research questions: (1) How are successful mobile marketing strategies created to increase brand awareness and sales? (2) How is mobile marketing used in the small business marketing communication mix? Participants were the primary people in charge of creating and implementing mobile marketing strategies for the small businesses. Data was obtained from semi-structured interviews with small business marketers, collection of mobile marketing documents, observation of mobile marketing processes and mobile marketing platforms. The six themes that emerged were: thinking strategically, identifying mobile channels for consumer engagement, analyzing the purpose of mobile marketing, developing mobile marketing objectives, evaluating the use of SMS/MMS, and measuring the value of mobile marketing strategies. The findings of this study may help small business marketers gain insight into planning and implementation of mobile marketing strategies that can be used to influence consumer acceptance and use of mobile marketing. Also, understanding how mobile channels are used in the sales funnel, from the initial contact, to the final purchase, and measuring the value of mobile marketing strategies may help marketers create and implement the strategies needed to increase brand awareness and sales